Avian influenza is certainly having an impact on the egg supply, resulting in a major egg shortage. The USDA reports more than 23 million infected birds and 151 confirmed flocks in the last 30 days (as of 2/17/25) Only 49 of those were backyard flocks, however. Ohio is the state worst hit, with Missouri next. The bulk of the cases are well to the east of the Rocky Mountains. Washington, California and Arizona are the states hit on this side of the continent. Western Europe has also been hard hit, as have some areas in the far east of Russia and China. There have also been some confirmed cases in dairy herds, although not very many in people.
Geography of an Egg Shortage
There is a pretty clear connection between the migratory bird flyways and the areas with lots of poultry cases. The Mississippi flyway runs over many of the states on the list and the Pacific flyway covers far West. There is also a pretty clear connection between the number of cases and those states with lots of large commercial flocks. Iowa is the #1 state and Ohio #2, followed in order by Indiana, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Texas, Arkansas, North Carolina, Michigan, Alabama, Missouri, California and Nebraska all have chicken populations of 10 million or more. Still, with the exception of a small number of states, all states have confirmed cases in commercial and backyard flocks.
What’s Next?
Not surprisingly, lots of people are flipping out. The egg shortage in some areas has reached the point that grocery stores are limiting purchases. I haven’t see anything to indicate rationing of chicken meat, which is interesting. It might be because frozen chicken parts are typically good for about nine months and whole chickens for a year, while eggs have a considerably faster turnover. Broilers also have a much shorter life span, (about 8 weeks) so their opportunities to get sick are much less. Broiler flocks are also smaller than egg-laying flocks. But the broiler parent birds are just as susceptible to bird flu as the laying flocks, so that may change. The other place where the rubber will meet the road is in the availability of chickens raised to replace commercial layers, which are usually culled at 2 years – sometimes less.
My Strategies
This problem is not going to go away overnight. When bird flu is identified in a commercial flock, the entire flock is euthanized. In some cases, we’re talking thousands of chickens in a single day. If you can’t get replacement chickens, the problem simply compounds itself. I haven’t used an incubator in a while, as I have a few hens that will set. But they don’t set consistently enough for me to feel comfortable relying on them for my future flocks. Last year I only got about a dozen chicks and five were roosters. So I ordered a new incubator; any chicks I get from setting hens will be a bonus. In the meantime, we’re being careful about egg consumption, doing what we can to promote good health in our birds and keeping our fingers crossed.
